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I think of a homelab as one or more servers (or a computer, laptop etc.) located in a home to play around with software, virtualization, hosting stuff both for testing and actual functional (home) use. Basically everything that's experimenting (like in a real lab) with technology. Of course the definition will be different for everyone :)
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Back when my Bride and I were living in a one bedroom apartment, she looked at my jumble of computers around my desk and asked "why not just get one big box?". I was browsing/shopping at Lockheed's outlet store, and stumbled across a glorious Sun 180 server with a 19", 8' tall rack. Only $25! Who could resist! We picked it up and my Bride was horrified to discover the refrigerator sized machine next to my desk. It is…
The 3/180? Awesome score. That's the "one big box" version of the 3/75 and pair of Sun shoeboxes that I once bought for home. (Bought used, from the local Sun office, which would occasionally email out of list old gear to sysadmins at customer sites, but for quite a lot more money than $25, unfortunately.) Hopefully the 3/180 isn't as crazy-loud as the big old 4/390 that my employer was still using for email and some…
Giant box to the right of the desk :) https://i.imgur.com/SpMMPXQ.jpg
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How does a UPS cause a high power bill? Doesn't it just charge up the batteries once and basically maintain after that?
The high power bill is due to using enterprise rack mount hardware with dual PSUs, instead of consumer hardware.
Newer stuff is sometimes a little better about ramping down at idle, but heck, some server fans will use more power than either of my desktop computers at idle.
I manage a network of a few hundred multi-layer switches, several routers, and a couple thousand wireless access points across a couple dozen campuses. My home network is an Eero. The network engineer’s kids have no homelab, as it were. Occasionally, I get the urge to build out a proper homelab but quickly realize I don’t want to come home and deal with the same stuff and put the Eero back in. It’s not that I don’t l…
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A media server is not a "homelab." One of the most irritating things about "homelabs" is that most people seem to think a "homelab" means "a rack of very expensive, way-overspec'd ubiquiti gear, an OTS NAS unit, and a docker container server running media server/torrent shit." I have a laptop running a dozen different containers - bookstack, torrent client, rss reader, and so on. I don't think of it as a "homelab."
I think of a homelab as one or more servers (or a computer, laptop etc.) located in a home to play around with software, virtualization, hosting stuff both for testing and actual functional (home) use. Basically everything that's experimenting (like in a real lab) with technology. Of course the definition will be different for everyone :)
Here are a few of the deployments that originated in my home lab but ended up in a prod environment at work
1. Replacing hardware load balancers with haproxy. (This started with a few options, including Nginx, and some others. But haproxy and it’s web management, csv monitoring gave me the best capability to integrate at work)
2. Vpn appliances for covid. I was able to whip up 2-4 scalable VPN appliances based on openvpn in “1/2 a day” at work because I was able to flesh out most of that at home.
3. Vulnerability scanners
4. HIDS security tools. In the end we went with a OTS vendor but options like ossec, wazuh etc were ruled out in a lab.
5. Ansible (over some of the other options)
6. Squid for reporting on the HIDS mentioned above.
There’s probably more. I know there is. And point blank a lot of this stuff had mock ups done at home because I have full control and am not subject to auditors etc when evaluating them. Whereas I do thst at work and I have to do more work writing up justification or change requests etc. it’s just easier at home.
All that said I try to keep the house as flat and plain Jane as I can.
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> running a homelab is a nonsensical Depends, I get a lot of utility from mine, as it manages my media collection for streaming at home and on the go. I've tried using SaaS alternatives and managed hosting of the apps I run, but those experiences were both lackluster and relatively expensive. And since the apps I run and my media collection aren't locked behind proprietary systems or limited APIs that might disappear…
A media server is not a "homelab." One of the most irritating things about "homelabs" is that most people seem to think a "homelab" means "a rack of very expensive, way-overspec'd ubiquiti gear, an OTS NAS unit, and a docker container server running media server/torrent shit." I have a laptop running a dozen different containers - bookstack, torrent client, rss reader, and so on. I don't think of it as a "homelab."
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> Consumer hardware is insane. With less technical management, I've had repeated, and bewildered, conversations trying to get them to understand that our one "computer" sitting on my desk is many many times faster than the "server" our IT team provides. "But it's a server!".
Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it takes up 4-6x more space than it needs to in what is likely the most expensive commercial real estate the company owns/leases. Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it can't be remotely lights-out managed and its hardware monitored using standardized tools (or at all.) Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it doesn't have redundant PSUs. Many times faster doesn't mean shit…
The server is a big pie. If you're buying a single slice, then yes, it's very very easy for a cheap old desktop to be way faster than a cheap VPS.
> Imagine IT people are the same, instead of assuming they're all idiots who are too stupid to go out and buy desktop computers instead of servers like your genius self.
It's the managers that are idiots. Not everything needs to run in a datacenter. Some things really are kittens and not cattle.
Anyone else annoyed at how narrow the term Homelab really is relative to what it could be? Any scientific or maker hobbies could take place in a "home lab," from breeding seedlings, to soldering and electronics work, to 3D printing. But it really means just networking and servers? Seems too narrow to me.
